OTTAWA — A stolen portrait of Winston Churchill that was swapped with a dodgy forgery during the pandemic has returned to its rightful place, after two Ottawa police detectives travelled to Rome to retrieve it.
And this time, it’s not going anywhere from its original home on the reading room wall of the posh Château Laurier hotel.
“I can tell you that is is armed, locked, secured,” laughed Genevieve Dumas, the hotel’s general manager, after the portrait was unveiled in a ceremony on Friday.
“It’s not moving,” she said, adding that staff accidentally triggered the alarm on Thursday while they hung it up, “and I’m sure they heard it on Parliament Hill.”
The most famous depiction of Churchill, known as “The Roaring Lion,” appears on the U.K.’s five-pound note and shows a glowering wartime prime minister staring into the camera.
Renowned photographer Yousuf Karsh snapped the iconic portrait in 1941 in the Speaker’s office just after Churchill delivered a rousing wartime address to Canadian lawmakers.
Toward the end of his life, Karsh signed and gifted the portrait to the hotel, where he had lived and worked.
Police said the portrait was stolen from the hotel sometime between Christmas Day 2021 and Jan. 6, 2022, and replaced with a dupe.
The swap was only uncovered months later, in August, when a hotel worker noticed the frame was not hung properly and looked different than the others.
The portrait was eventually tracked down in Genoa, Italy. It had been sold through an auction house in London to a private buyer, and both seller and buyer were unaware that it had been stolen, police said.
Police have now charged a man from the town of Powassan, Ont., just outside North Bay, with forgery, theft and trafficking. That case is before the courts.
The portrait’s return was a widely anticipated event, with a ceremony held in a room packed with attendees including Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe.
Karsh’s wife, Estrellita, sent the hotel a note to be read at the event.
“(The Château Laurier was) not just where we lived and worked — it was our home, and the wonderful staff became our family,” read Laurence Schaller, the hotel’s director of government and diplomatic affairs.
“The Winston Churchill portrait was especially meaningful to my husband because it was taken almost next door, in the Speaker’s chambers in Parliament, and it has become one of the most iconic images in photography.”
Nicola Cassinelli, a lawyer in Genoa who bought the stolen artwork, also sent a message.
“I had hanging in my living room — without even knowing it — an artwork whose significance goes beyond its mere beauty,” he wrote.
“The magnificent photograph by Yousuf Karsh captures in the eyes of Sir Winston Churchill the pride, the anger and the strength of the free world. And it represents, better than any other, the desire for the triumph of good over evil.”
And despite the “extraordinary privilege” of having the portrait hang in his home, “The Roaring Lion,” he said, belongs to the public.
More specifically, it “belongs to anyone who cherishes freedom. For this reason, out of deep respect for the Crown, the government and the people of Canada, I did not hesitate to return it.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 15, 2024.
Alessia Passafiume, The Canadian Press